Jobs’s Spaceship-Like Apple Offices Completion Meets Delays

An aerial rendering of the planned Apple Computer headquarters in Cupertino, California is shown in this undated photo released to the media on Aug. 3, 2012. Source: Foster and Partners via Bloomberg

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. said the construction of
a new spaceship-like headquarters with a circular design in
Cupertino, California, won’t be completed until mid-2016, later
than originally projected, as the company revises its plans.

The iPhone maker included the new timetable in an updated
proposal it submitted to the city on Nov. 14. While Apple, the
world’s largest company by market value, had wanted to break
ground on the 176-acre campus this year, the city may not
complete its environmental impact report until June, and Apple
may not be able to start work until 2014.

“They could conceivably break ground in 2013, but only if
everything goes smoothly,” said David Brandt, Cupertino’s city
manager. That depends on the city council approving the project
quickly, and on residents not filing legal challenges. “The
project is running a little bit slow.”

Apple notified the city in August that it planned to update
its proposal in September. By filing in November, possible
approval in early 2013 became unrealistic, said Brandt. In its
original plan, the company said it envisioned moving in by 2015.

The new site, dubbed Apple Campus 2, “will be a new home
for our company and an important part of the lives of more than
12,000 Apple employees,” said Amy Bessette, a spokeswoman for
Apple. “With that in mind, we have approached this project with
the same care and attention to detail we pay when designing any
Apple product. We look forward to moving the project forward
with the city and beginning construction.”

Parking, Trees

The new document includes no major changes from the
ambitious plan that Steve Jobs presented to the city council in
June 2011, four months before his death. Apple submitted
revisions that will let it complete the project without having
to truck out any dirt, and wants to move a free-standing, 1,000-seat auditorium farther away from one of the surrounding roads
than in the original plan.

The company also wants to construct an additional building
to house utility equipment and more parking spots for some of
the workers Apple plans to employ at the new site, which the
company pegs at as many as 14,200. Because many of the 10,500
parking spots will be underground, Apple said it intends to
almost triple the amount of landscaped area. It has also removed
from the plans a footbridge over a creek that runs through one
corner of the property.

“There’s nothing super-significant,” said Brandt. He said
the city didn’t request any of the changes. “I think they are
just constantly trying to improve the project.”

There are no substantial changes to the circular four-story
main building, which at 2.8 million square feet will be one of
the largest buildings in the world. The revised proposal
includes the same artist renderings from the initial submission,
which portray a glass-dominated structure surrounded by a
landscape of native grasses and trees. The campus will include
7,000 trees.

The city plans to post the new plan online after
Thanksgiving, by which time it will have added enough servers to
handle the torrent of traffic it expects from Apple fans, said
Aarti Shrivastava, Cupertino’s director of community
development.